Damien Echols answers the phone with a cough. He and wife Lorri Davis have been on the road for over two months promoting "West of Memphis," Amy Berg's documentary that charts Echols' and two co-defendants' struggles with the Arkansas justice system, and now he's gotten sick.

"I wasn't very hardy to begin," the 38-year-old says. "Eighteen years in prison kind of destroys your immune system. So now every time somebody around me gets anything, I end up getting it five times worse."

Echols and co-defendants Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, who became known as the West Memphis Three, attracted attention from the start. At first, it was for the horrific crime they were accused of committing, the 1993 killings of three 8-year-old boys in their West Memphis, Ark., hometown. After the 1994 convictions, in which Baldwin and Misskelley received life sentences and Echols was condemned to death, the debate shifted as facts arose to suggest that the three teenagers could, in fact, be innocent.

Despite all the attention, by 2004 the case was languishing when "The Hobbit" filmmaker Peter Jackson and his wife, screenwriter and producer Fran Walsh, sent in a donation. Davis began corresponding with them, and when the couple traveled to New York to premiere "King Kong" in 2005, they met with Davis and the lawyers working to exonerate the three.

"We spent all night talking about the case," Davis remembers. "From that moment on, they were part of our legal team and nothing was the same."

"It finally felt like we had a fighting chance when they came on the case," Echols adds. "After you see how corrupt the system is, you start to feel that the individual doesn't stand a chance in hell against the state. It's like an ant getting into a fight with a steamroller. You just can't match them in any way.

"Then when Fran and Peter came on, it was like, 'Finally, we can fight back. Finally, we have the means to at least defend ourselves against what they are doing to us.' For the first time, it felt like we had hope."

Idea arose gradually

The idea of making a documentary arose only gradually. The Jacksons had been lending their support to the case for a couple of years when the West Memphis Three's legal team brought new evidence to court, only to be rebuffed by a judge who had no interest in even considering the notion that the state might have convicted the wrong men.

"Peter said, 'Then let's do what we do best. If he's going to try to cover this up, let's at least try to get this out to the public so they can see what it is he's covering up. Let's make this film," Echols says.

Research into documentarians led to the hiring of Berg, the director of 2006 Oscar nominee "Deliver Us From Evil," which focused on a pedophile Catholic priest and the church's role in covering up his crimes. She spent six months familiarizing herself with the case and debating whether she really wanted to devote herself to the project before committing. After that, she was all in, spending three years making the film and becoming what Davis describes as a second arm to the legal team, as the documentary evolved into a new investigation of the crime.

'So shocking'

"The whole thing was so shocking that everything else was just kind of icing," Berg says. "The fact that they got it so wrong was shocking. You don't want to believe that that could happen."

By 2011, Berg thought she was done. Her film meticulously pores over the facts of the case, emphasizing the flaws in the original case and new facts that have emerged, including the fact that while there was no DNA evidence connecting the West Memphis Three to the slain boys, there was evidence that pointed to another party. Still, the Arkansas court wouldn't budge.

"There have been over 300 exonerations now due to DNA testing, yet there has never been, in the entire history of Arkansas, anyone who has been exonerated from Death Row, ever," Echols says. "Whenever they'd answer our appeals, they'd say, not only has Arkansas never executed an innocent person, never in the history of the state has an innocent person even been sent to prison."

With freedom for the West Memphis Three looking as elusive as ever, Berg was preparing to bring "West of Memphis" to the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival when the unexpected happened. The prison doors opened 18 years after the trio's arrest. Happily, Berg had to shoot a new ending.

Echols is delighted at what Berg has done with the documentary, but admits he finds promoting the film stressful. Talking about his experience plunges him right back into it.

"It's like you're out of prison, but you're not out of prison at the same time, because you spend all day, every day talking about it over and over and over," he says.

Getting on with life

These days, he is happily getting on with his life. His memoir "Life After Death," a follow-up to his 2005 book "Almost Home: My Life Story, Vol. 1," came out in September. He recently exhibited his art in New York. He and Davis have settled in Salem, Mass., where he hopes to open a small meditation center.

At one time, he thought he would die in prison. If the state didn't kill him, then the soul-crushing stress and the prison's poor medical care would. At the same time, he met Davis when she became interested in his case and has forged friendships with people who have become like family to him.

Learning in prison

He used his time in prison to educate himself and to write. From the worst of times came the seeds that are flowering into a brand-new life.

"We've had tremendous blessings come out of this," he says. "There has been a lot of good that's come out of this case in addition to the bad.

"Pain is some kind of weird alchemy that turns knowledge into wisdom and as hard as it was getting through that and as many scars as it left, I still think even now that that was a blessing." {sbox}